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Summary Of When The Emperor Was Divine

558 Words3 Pages

Gemma Gao
Mr. Skardal
Literature and Law
February 6, 2015
When the Emperor was Divine
In the book When the Emperor was Divine, the story of a Japanese-American family that happened during World War II is being told. During that period, a large amount of Japanese who live in California, United States is being put into the internment camp or arrested due to the Attack on Pearl Harbor. In the book When the Emperor was Divine, the father of the family is being arrested by the FBI because he is suspected a spy. The mother has to take care of her two children and move to the internment camp in Utah. After three years, the family is released from the internment camp; then they come back to their house and wait for the father’s return. However, after the father returns home thin and worn, the family has been changed forever. Besides telling the true story and showing how people lose identities, this book also talks about in what ways laws can be injustice and unfair.
Before going into the book, I am going to begin with providing a brief background on the Japanese American during World War II. The relationship between U.S Government and Japanese Government reached the tensest point since the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941. Since …show more content…

For example, the characters are just being called “the mother,” “the son,” “the daughter,” and “the father.” Even their dog’s name is just simply as “white dog.” The reason for this is the almost same thing happened to many different families. Also, in this way, readers can be personally when they are reading. The family has been changed a lot by the internment camp and the cruel laws they had at that time. In order to avoid being put into the internment camp, they begin to lose their identity. After the family came back from internment camp, the children

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